Alberta Business Marketing

The Langley Horse Federation is taking on a new lease of life as a vehicle to boost the horse industry in Langley.  In this it is supported by the Township of Langley and by its Mayor, Rick Green, who is a well-known horseman.

Its most visible and well-known presence up till now has been the "Spirit Of The Horse Memorial Garden", which is situated in Campbell Valley Park at 1200 208th Avenue, Langley, B.C.  That was started by Joy Richardson, one of the key movers and shakers on the Langley horse scene.

Now the Langley Horse Federation will be holding a “Team Up For Success” workshop from 9:00 am until 5:00 pm on Saturday September 18th, 2010 in the Banquet Room at the Langley Events Centre.  It puts forward the following challenge:

Langley, “the Horse Capital of British Columbia”.  Factual statement or idle boast?  With approximately 6000 horses and an estimated $125 Million annually in direct, indirect and imputed economic benefit, great credence can be attributed to that statement.  Almost every sector of the economy is impacted: tourism; retail; hospitality; horse facilities; agriculture; and the list goes on.  What would you like to see happening in the horse community in Langley?

The workshop will suggest a number of initiatives for the horse industry to consider and encourages members of the horse community to get involved. Two in particular caught my eye.

Public relations and marketing initiatives
Can we raise the public and political profile of the horse industry by:

• establishing a formal, ongoing relationship with media in the Lower Mainland to promote positive coverage of horse industry events and issues
• establishing a relationship with tourism Langley for marketing initiatives
• establishing a lobby group to work with local government and regulatory agencies to make sure the horse industry and horse community has a ‘voice’ in the discussion of issues affecting them
• work with local council to encourage land use policies that further establish and support equestrian activities
• encouraging close and ongoing communication between Langley horse clubs, and horse industry sectors like boarding stables

Educational initiatives
Can we educate members of the horse community by encouraging the development of:

• equestrian and farm management courses at Kwantlen College or through community education programs
• a series of specialty clinics held by high-caliber clinicians

Can we educate members of our community about horses by:

• introducing books about horses into school reading programs
• organizing school field trips to horse and riding stables

One sector of the industry that can play an important role in both of these initiatives is that of therapeutic horseback riding.  There are several fine centres offering such services in Langley including VTEA  and PRDA.  As an example, VTEA is hosting a free horsemanship demonstration by Jay O Jay on Saturday August 28 that will help on both of these initiatives.  (Details are on the VTEA website.)

---

Copyright © 2010 The Other Blokes Blog. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact admin@otherbb.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Langley Horse Federation Workshop

Related Posts

• July 28, 2010 -- Learn How To Connect With Your Horse In Langley BC (0)
• June 17, 2010 -- You And Your Horse: Connections In Langley, BC (0)
• October 17, 2007 -- Canadian Business – Changed Perspectives (0)
• April 28, 2010 -- Golden Ears Bridge BC now on Google Maps (3)
• September 16, 2009 -- Langley Horse Capital of BC (1)

Tags: BC, horse, jay 0 jay, Langley, society, VTEA
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

As the Horse Capital of BC, where better to learn about connecting with horses than in Langley.

Mark your calendar because there is a free demonstration of how to start connecting with your horse.  The details are as follows:

It will be given by Jay OJay, the celebrated horseman, now based in Langley  who helps fine riders and their spirited horses get connected.  He will be demonstrating just what is possible with his own very young horses, Casper, Junior and Grace.

When	Saturday August 28th from 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm
Where:	VTEA Riding Center (Valley Therapeutic Equestrian Association) 3330 256th Street Aldergrove, BC  V4W 1Y4
Schedule:	1:30  -  1:50           Working with Casper 1:50  -  2:10           Working with Junior 2:10  -  2:20                   Intermission 2:20  -  2:40           Working with Grace 2:40  -  3:00           Q and A with Jay O’Jay

The demonstration will be given in a round pen  in the arena, which is being generously provided by a close neighbour,  Dare’s Country Feeds, 25236 Fraser Highway, Aldergrove (Telephone: 604-856-1611)

If Jay OJay is a new name to you, you can find all about him, his training methods and his training DVDs on the Jay OJay website:

Jay O’Jay is a horseman who specializes in developing a respectful relationship and connection between horse and rider. His passion is the Western discipline of Reining, but through his clinics, videos and demonstrations, he aspires to teach "transferable skills" to riders and horse owners of all disciplines and experience. Those skills, based on the ability to earn respect and gain control of the horse, are the central elements in Jay’s "common sense" approach to his training program.

Jay has nurtured the natural gift he has for working with and connecting with horses – as well as people. With a personal mission to improve everyone’s relationship and experience with their horse, he shares his respect for the horse with enthusiasm, patience, and passion.

To contact Jay OJay, call 778-686-9115 or e-mail him at jayojay@gmail.com.

This is a show not to be missed, so make sure to be there on Saturday August 28.

---

Copyright © 2010 The Other Blokes Blog. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact admin@otherbb.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Learn How To Connect With Your Horse In Langley BC

Related Posts

• August 21, 2010 -- Langley Horse Federation Workshop (0)
• June 17, 2010 -- You And Your Horse: Connections In Langley, BC (0)
• October 17, 2007 -- Canadian Business – Changed Perspectives (0)
• April 28, 2010 -- Golden Ears Bridge BC now on Google Maps (3)
• September 16, 2009 -- Langley Horse Capital of BC (1)

Tags: BC, canada, connect, horse, Jay O'Jay, Langley
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

Making Connections

Connecting with others is a key priority in these stressful times.  Despite the frenetic pace of life for most people, they will still set aside some time to be in touch with their loved ones and with their friends, colleagues and acquaintances.

Writing letters used to be the way, but few now do that.  For most the short message (or even a tweet) that Facebook or Twitter make so easy is a great way of saying ‘I’m here’.

Connecting with a Horse

Many horse owners find a particularly important connection is the one they have with their horse. If you want to understand more on that, there are lots of resources on the Internet to explore what can be involved in that.  Connecting With Horses on the VTEA website (more on them below) is a good compendium of some of the ‘movers and shakers’ in this rapidly developing field.

Langley, Horse Capital of BC

Langley is often said to be the Horse Capital of BC so it is not surprising that you will find some shining examples here of how people are connecting with their horses.  The relationship between a horse owner and his or her horse is complex when the best possible connection is being achieved.  After all, the horse is a prey animal, fearing constantly about attacks by predators, while we humans are by nature predators.  Overcoming that barrier is something that requires the right attitude and gentle persistence.

VTEA

If you want to see connections between horses and their riders that work, there is nothing better than visiting one of the establishments that provides therapeutic horseback riding programs to special needs children.  One such in Langley is VTEA (Valley Therapeutic Equestrian Association) at 3330 256th Street, Aldergrove in Langley, BC.  You can read much more on what they do at their website at http://www.vtea.ca/

Jay O’Jay

Perhaps you have not caught up with the latest news but a celebrated expert on You and Your Horse: Connections is now resident in Langley.  That’s my way of explaining what he does, not his.  He believes that the nature of the relationship between the owner and the horse is critical and in some cases may present serious challenges.  However, rarely do you have problem horses.  All that is missing is that the owner and the horse have not yet developed a  mutually-satisfying relationship.  You can read more on his thinking and what he does at his website at http://www.jayojay.com/

Two upcoming events

If you want to see Connections with Horses in practice, rather than just reading about them, then two events are coming up very shortly that are ideal opportunities.

Jay O’Jay Open House

Jay O’Jay will be holding an Open House where you can see him in action demonstrating how you make connections.  It’s free, refreshments will be available and it is taking place on Sunday 20th June at 1:00 pm.  You can find that at 8575 240th Street, Langley BC.  Just park carefully along the roadside and wander in.  Sorry but you should leave your dog(s) in your car (with the window slightly down) or at home, since those predators can be distracting.

VTEA Annual Horse Show

A week later on Saturday June 26th, VTEA is holding its annual Horse Show.  It runs from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm or later so there’s lots of opportunities for you and your children to pop in.  You will see how the special needs children have developed the connections with their horses and a fun time is guaranteed.

Members of the BC Hot Rod Association will also be present with some of their cars so there’s something for anyone.  You can even become a member or renew your membership for the coming year.  It’s only $5 but that and your involvement in whatever way you can will help strengthen some of the very best connections with horses you will ever see.

---

Copyright © 2010 The Other Blokes Blog. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact admin@otherbb.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

You And Your Horse: Connections In Langley, BC

Related Posts

• August 21, 2010 -- Langley Horse Federation Workshop (0)
• July 28, 2010 -- Learn How To Connect With Your Horse In Langley BC (0)
• October 17, 2007 -- Canadian Business – Changed Perspectives (0)
• April 28, 2010 -- Golden Ears Bridge BC now on Google Maps (3)
• November 19, 2008 -- Happy 150th Birthday, British Columbia (0)

Tags: BC, connections, horses, Jay O'Jay, Langley, society, VTEA
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

Professional writers blog: that is my short and emphatic answer to the implied question in a guest post by Larry Brooks on the Problogger blog.  His cryptic title, as he described it was, Why Professional Writers Need a Blog. Or Not.  His article raised some interesting questions and on some of these I profoundly disagree with what he said.

What Is A Professional Writer?

To avoid any unnecessary debate over terms, we should clarify what we mean by a professional writer.  In my book it is someone who writes for an audience and enjoys a success in so doing.  Success can be measured in monetary terms or perhaps merely in the number of readers that the writer draws to his writings.  Some successful professional writers are so well known that anything they write will attract a large audience.  For them is the luxury of doing what ever comes naturally and the audience will be there.

Should Professional Writers Blog?

Leaving aside the highly visible and well-known writers, what is the answer to our question for the average professional writer who may be unknown to his first time readers.  Larry Brooks divided such writers into two groups and felt different rules applied.  His groups were

• Non-Fiction Professional Writers
• Fiction Writers

If we examine what a blog really does, I think you will see that really the same answer applies to both. 

Blogs Versus Websites

A blog is really one type of website so in fact the comparison here is between blogs and websites which are not blogs.  Non-blog websites contain static web pages and normally little new content is added from one period to another.

A blog on the other hand has continuing new content added on a time sequence basis.  Very often it has an associated news feed, which is a file that automatically alerts aggregators of news that a new item has been added.  This double-up visibility is one of the key reasons why blogs are much more effective in bringing in visitors to the online property.

Blogs Have Heightened Online Visibility

An even bigger leveraging factor on blog visibility is that Google, the dominant search engine, in some ways overvalues blog post web pages relative to static web pages.  Google does not make public why its behavior should be like this, but one element in this is that the Google search engine values recent new web pages above more established and older web pages, at least for a few days.

This means that if someone wishes to have an online presence, a blog is far superior to a regular non-blog website.

Who Should Blog?

Given this heightened visibility for blogs, who then should be blogging?  A better way of opening up this topic is to ask, Who should not be blogging?  If you are aiming to communicate with the world via an online presence, then this online presence should be a blog.  It may be appropriate to add other more static website components such as a forum or a wiki, but their content will be slightly less visible through the search engines.

Some will question whether they have sufficient ongoing content to be able to create new blog posts with some regularity.  The answer to that is perhaps best illustrated by discussing the group that Larry Brooks suggested should have a static website.

Should Fiction Writers Blog?

Larry Brooks had the following advice for fiction writers:

Why doesn’t a blog work to promote a novel?

Because you can only blog about your book for so long.  And blog readers are almost completely intolerant of self-serving, thinly disguised promotional agendas.

You have to earn every single moment of personal mindshare from a prospective buyer through the delivery of content they can put to work in their lives.

Blogging also comes with another type of risk.

Even if you have valid to offer.

Blogging can be addictive and hungry, it can eat up energy, time and mindspace like no other intellectual pursuit you’ve ever been tempted to give in to.

If you dive in, you need to be all in.   And that’s a huge commitment.

Given that line of thinking, Larry Brooks pushed for a static website for each novel.  However he ignores the fact that blogs are several times more visible than static websites in search engine results.  The blog can be very effective during the buildup to the book launch and following the launch. 

Indeed even thereafter, devout readers may be interested in whatever further developments have occurred about the novel and any sequels. Such content may be less hot with human readers but it serves to maintain visibility among those search engines.  The importance of this is such that a blog is always worth the effort even though these blogs will require only limited extra content as time passes.  Nevertheless they create a much larger impression on the search engine radar screen around the static website that is specifically for the novel.  In this way, the visitor traffic to the novel website will be maximized on an ongoing basis.  That should lead to higher book sales, which is after all the key objective.

---

Copyright © 2010 The Other Blokes Blog. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact admin@otherbb.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Professional Writers Blog

Related Posts

• February 24, 2010 -- Marketing Right Now For Winners (0)
• April 14, 2009 -- Three Tips For Choosing Great Blog Topics (1)
• March 6, 2009 -- Google Is Killing Its Golden Goose (11)
• March 16, 2008 -- Bell Canada Website Problems (4)
• July 27, 2007 -- If I Build It, They Probably Won’t Come (0)

Tags: blog, Larry Brooks, novel, website, writer
Posted in Blogging | | Comments Off

In writing about the Other Brain, we conveniently slid over a confusion about just what other brains there may be.  Just which is the Second Brain and could there be a Third Brain.

Dr.  Michael Gershon, an expert in the nascent field of neurogastroenterology, laid the seeds of confusion with his 1998 book The Second Brain.   A Scientific American article earlier in the year was a useful  recap of what is involved.  It was called “Think Twice: How the Gut’s ‘Second Brain’ Influences Mood and Well-Being.”

There is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our “second brain”.

A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body.

Although its influence is far-reaching, the second brain is not the seat of any conscious thoughts or decision-making.

Marghi Merzenich provides more details on this “Second Brain”.

The second brain is a mass of tissue in our intestines that shares many qualities with our brains–millions of neurons, many of the same key chemicals (like dopamine and serotonin). This “second brain” is officially called the “enteric nervous system,” and it’s a fascinating part of the body.

The brain and spinal cord are known as the “central nervous system.” The “peripheral nervous system” connects the central nervous system to the rest of the body, moving the messages along until they reach their destination. The enteric nervous system (the “second brain”)  is part of the peripheral nervous system.

What makes the “second brain” unique from other parts of the peripheral nervous system, though, is that it can function even without input from the central nervous system, and sends many more messages to the central nervous system than it receives. And while it’s not a center of conscious thought, it has widespread influence on our physical bodies and our emotional well-being. This may have implications for how we treat emotional problems like depression.

That’s all well and good but that Second Brain term was being used by others in a different context.  A 2009 article proclaimed, Introducing Our Second and Third Brains: We Do Think With Our Heart and Instinct

This article noted that neuro-scientists have demonstrated that we have a brain in our heart and another in our intestines. What we have in each of these, in actual fact, is an extensive mass of neurons that behave in a fashion similar to the neurons contained in the brain, and that appear to function at mega-speeds, often much greater than those of our cerebral neurons.  

What they are referring to is the work of J. Andrew Armour, M.D., Ph.D. in Montreal and others.  Their picture is that the heart brain is the second brain and the enteric (intestine) brain is the third brain.

Whether you consider that we have two brains or three brains, either picture states very clearly that your logical brain is not the sole way you are assessing information, processing it and making decisions.  At least one other brain or perhaps two is/are unconsciously involved and you probably never realize it. 

Becoming more aware of these different brains and balancing the way they interact can bring significant improvement in the way you try to achieve your goals.  The Three Brain Synergy website provides more information on these issues and can show you what is involved in ensuring all your brains are working in the most effective collaboration.

---

Copyright © 2010 The Other Blokes Blog. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact admin@otherbb.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Second Brain Or Third Brain

Related Posts

• May 7, 2010 -- The Other Brain (2)

Tags: Brain, brainware, Central nervous system, Neuron, Peripheral nervous system, Spinal cord
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off